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There can be no doubt that the CBO comments are indeed devastating to the current health care reform packages under consideration. CBO's analysis reveals that none of the bills under consideration will do anything to control costs--which undermines a key selling point for health care reform that has been used repeatedly by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats to sell the country on the legislation they have crafted. All of this, plus the fact that the health care reform bills under consideration will only serve to increase taxes to onerous levels, increase the size and complexity of the health care bureaucracy, drive health care providers out of business, lower wages, and give life to another unaffordable entitlement, means that it is incumbent upon the Obama Administration and Congress to rethink their approach to health care reform.

Such a rethinking should naturally involve re-examining the worth of universal coverage itself. If we are going to improve the health care system, we ought to do it by increasing the affordability of care--something that may be impossible if we are simply going to put the cart of universal coverage before the horse of costs.

Right now, the polls show a surprising amount of ambivalence on the part of the public towards health care reform, and Democratic claims concerning it. That ambivalence should only increase once more people realize that when it comes to the Democrats' approaches on health care reform, the budgetary math simply does not add up.

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